


Catch Up and Breathe

by Rhinozilla



Category: The Walking Dead
Genre: Camaraderie, Family, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 16:17:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9279617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinozilla/pseuds/Rhinozilla
Summary: Shortly after coming to Hilltop, the physical toll of everything catches up to Daryl. In Daryl fashion, he manages to simultaneously dismiss it as nothing and panic about what it could mean. Sasha is there to knock some sense into him.





	

He was fine. He was fine. He was FINE.

If Daryl thought it enough times, then it’d be true. The angry stomach cramps that had woken him up abruptly doubled him over where he stood outside the trailer, and everything he’d eaten in the past two days came up. 

His mantra was interrupted as his concentration whited out. He kept his elbows locked straight as he held onto his knees, but he could feel his joints shaking, unsteady. His shoulder, though nearly healed, groaned in protest, and shards of pain from the wound dug a line across his collar, up his neck, and into the side of his skull.

He was fine. He WAS fine.

There wasn’t much to come up. Maggie had all but shoved a plate of food at him and kept it coming earlier, and he hadn’t had it in him to argue with her. He’d been starving. He’d overdone it. Now he was paying for it. It didn’t take long for it all to hit the grass, and his nose burned as he coughed hard. He tried to will back the dry heaves, but he could taste bile. He was just glad it was the middle of the night and too dark for him to see the sick.

He was fine.

“Sit.” A hand touched his elbow, fingers loose but ready to tighten if he started to teeter.

Daryl twitched and turned his head to see Sasha, her silhouette visible by the dim moonlight. Her brows were pinched together in concern, and there wasn’t a trace of sleep in her eyes.

“M’fine,” he garbled out, wiggling his arm free from her.

“Daryl, sit.” It wasn’t a request, and her boot pushed an overturned milk crate behind him.

Too exhausted and sore to fight her, Daryl sank back until he was sitting on the crate. He leaned far over, just in case anything else wanted to come up. He braced his forearm across his knee, and the heel of his other hand pushed at the side of his forehead, where the traveling pain from his shoulder had set up shop.

Sasha’s hand ghosted across his forehead, then his cheek, before she sighed and straightened up. “You’re warm.”

“Warm night,” he grumbled, only to shiver in the midnight breeze.

Sasha was quiet long enough for Daryl to glare at her. Her expression was unconvinced.

“I’m fine,” he said more forcefully, spitting onto the grass.

The taste in his mouth was awful, and his nose was still burning. He glanced toward the door to the trailer, where the others had piled in together for the night at Hilltop. His knee was jumping, and he frowned, shoving his heel into the dirt until the fidgeting stopped.

“They’re asleep,” Sasha answered the unspoken question. “Here.” She offered a bottle of water.

Daryl wanted to brush her off or sneer at her, but he had nothing left. So he took the bottle, used the first drink to rinse out his mouth, and then drained the rest of it in three long pulls.

“Sittin’ out in the cold won’t help anything,” Sasha remarked. “If nothing else is going to come up, you should get some sleep.”

Daryl scoffed and shook his head, turning the empty bottle around in his hands. “Nah, m’fine out here.”

“Daryl…” In his periphery, Sasha shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “If you’re getting sick—“

“Ain’t—“ Daryl lifted a hand to stop her, deflated, and let it fall to his knee again. “Just…no.”

The lines on Sasha’s forehead deepened in confusion. “Why?”

Daryl snorted incredulously and looked at her. She of all the people here should get it by now.

“Risky.”

“Risky.” Sasha repeated, kneeling down a bit to force him to maintain eye contact. “You may think you’re all big and bad, but you’ve never been risky to us.”

It was an attempt at levity, and after having the others walk on eggshells around him all day, he appreciated her effort. That being said, facts were facts, and time hadn’t dulled this threat yet.

“Fever,” he spat the word. “Coughing. Vomiting…Ain’t somethin’ needs to be in a confined space around people…’specially Maggie.”

Sasha’s posture changed, and she sighed heavily, pulling up another crate and sitting on it beside him. “It’s not that.”

“You don’t know—“

“Oh, I don’t?” It was Sasha’s turn to scoff. She folded her forearms along her thighs and clasped her hands together at her knees. “This is not what happened at the prison. That…virus or disease or whatever it was…It stayed at the prison. It didn’t follow us here. Shit, we’re hundreds of miles away. You’ve just…This looks like run of the mill sick.”

“And if it ain’t? If it’s…”

“They were coughing blood, not apple pie,” Sasha quipped. “Eyes bleeding, faces turning blue, throats closing up, worse. This,” she gestured to his condition. “Is the least of our threats at the moment. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re still upright.”

Daryl eyed her, confused.

Sasha’s gaze softened. “You’ve been through a trauma. That takes a physical toll.”

Daryl bristled. “Everybody been through shit—“

“But you were there,” Sasha pressed. “They took you. You were—“ She pursed her lips, carefully choosing her words. “You were a prisoner, and I’m not asking what they—“ More careful thought. “Nobody should be expected to go through that and be okay.”

His emotional reserve had been completely drained after reuniting with them all that day, but the tenderness in Sasha’s voice scraped the barrel of what was left. He lowered his head toward his knees, trying to push it back.

“Breathe,” Sasha instructed slowly, her hand hovering at his elbow again like an anchor.

Daryl obeyed because it was all he could do. He took in deep pulls of air, holding it for a few seconds before releasing it. A technique Michonne had taught him on the road: measured breathing to calm down. 

“I used to see it a lot, before.” Sasha was speaking again. “People go through some bad shit, but they’re not bleeding, they’re not dying, so they just…keep going. But trauma like—It takes out your defenses, puts a dent in your immune system long enough for something to slip through that normally wouldn’t…Keep breathing.”

Daryl closed his eyes, letting his head continue to hang. The angle stretched the coiled muscle at his shoulder joint, and it was somewhat relieving.

“A few years ago, I got in this car accident,” Sasha was saying. “Just a little fender bender, nothing serious, nothing broken. Had some bruising from the seatbelt and the wind knocked out of me, but that was it…So I go home, get a heating pad on the sore spots, try to find a position to sleep in that doesn’t hurt too bad…” She snapped her fingers. “Got a head cold so bad I couldn’t breathe through my nose. Chills. Throbbing pain through my sinuses. Felt like molasses sloshing around in my head instead of my brain. Healthy as a horse before that and then bam…I’m telling you, it just throws your body back for a while.”

Listening to her talk had helped quiet the pounding of his pulse in his temples, and he got his breathing under enough control to snort and look at her.

Sasha tilted her head. “That’s what this is. You finally got a day to slow down, and it’s all caught up to your body. You’re not dying. This isn’t the prison flu. I promise.”

“You cain’t promise that—“ Daryl eyed her.

Sasha punctuated her words. “I’m. Promising. That.” When he didn’t argue further, she gave him a smug smile, then glanced toward the trailer door again. “That being said, you are still under the weather with something.”

“I ain’t goin’ back in there. Not with Maggie,” he reiterated firmly.

Sasha lifted her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. But you’re not staying out here. We need you in fighting shape.” She nudged him. “Things here are pretty lean. They don’t keep a lot of living space beyond their numbers. So I think your options are either Greg’s place or that truck with the bench seats over—“

“Yeah.” Daryl pointed toward the truck in question. “That’s no contest.”

Sasha snorted and stood, stretching a bit. Daryl gingerly followed, both relieved that his stomach had quieted and annoyed at how the action of throwing up had exhausted him.

“I’ll grab a blanket for you—“

“I’m fine,” he repeated.

“Daryl Dixon, I swear to God—“

Daryl groaned dramatically and caught Sasha’s smirk. She crossed over to the trailer door, and he moved in the opposite direction, toward the truck. Being apart from the others made him ache, but he couldn’t in good conscience share space with Maggie in her condition, not when he was like this.

“Hey,” he called softly to Sasha before she opened the door. “Thanks.”

Sasha smiled. “Shut up, Dixon.”

Daryl snorted, smirked, and made his way to the truck.


End file.
